Hrot Review (Mafn)
HROT is a very brown game, like, even more than Quake is, which is an achievement. Unfortunately that brown extends to more than just the visual aspects of the game, as none of the weapons in the game stand out and all of the boss enemies and encounters elicit a feeling of "oh no, not another one" rather than excitement at a coming challenge, hell, even the humour in the game is ...brown. The setting of the game being in a soviet era Czechoslovakia (I might be wrong on this) doesn't help with the feeling of brownness going on either.
I played through the game on Very Hard (the hardest of the 5 difficulties) and never really felt strapped for ammunition, there were however times when I had to play it safe due to low HP, but even dying is not a big issue as the game effortlessly restarts the level or loads you straight to your latest save practically instantly, which is very cool.
Most of the levels in the game are set up in a sort of "area that you get routed through by off-shoot paths a few times before moving on to the next" type of way, which is noticeable but seems to be part of how they designed things, as the developers are really good at dumping you where you need to go next, and are very generous in giving you ways to back track through levels to pick up ammo/health or to look for secrets. Speaking of secrets..
If you love to scour every inch of a map for old-school DOOM style secrets where you're looking for every jaunty looking texture or interactable wall, then this game might be for you as it has tonnes of them. That's not to say that all the secrets are like that, as some are more logic based where they show you the "goal" and you have to work backwards to find how to open the secret up, and others are more direct "blow up the crack in the wall", or "which of these bricks protrudes from the surface and is thus a button" so there's a good variety in secrets to find.
Overall the game is fine but I'd recommend Prodeus or Amid Evil over it, but if HROT looks interesting to you, you might enjoy it more than I did.